Programme Aims and Eligibility

Programme Aims

Diversity is absolutely fundamental to the continued success of UK art and culture – whether it is diversity of artists, audiences or those working for arts organisations.

The Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries is about breaking down barriers to support this, levelling the playing field for people from lower income backgrounds and making sure arts organisations can benefit from the skills and experience of all new talent.

Creating 40 new placements with 40 leading arts organisations across the UK, the programme will build on the previous two editions of the programme to:

Enable professional and personal development for 40 participants from low income backgrounds, supporting the next generation of cultural leaders in the arts who may otherwise struggle to get started in this sector.

Support organisational and artistic development, and capacity building of 40 host organisations, contributing to our understanding of the important issue of diversity in the arts.

Create a powerful network of organisations and participants that acts as a model for the sector as well as a structure to help disseminate learning across the arts sector about how to recruit as widely as possible to support diversity at entry level.

Embed evaluation in the process so that reflection and learning are valued and the model is tested and strengthened and can be more easily explained.

In selecting this cohort of 40 host organisations and placements, we have looked at organisations who offered the very best opportunity for an individual at the start to their career in the arts and showed the greatest impact this placement might have on their own business, creative work and approach to talent development and diversity. The intention is that the placements are the best possible experience for both hosts and participants.

Eligibility Criteria

Recruitment for each placement is carried out by the individual host organisations who will be trialling new ways of recruiting as widely as possible and to be as accessible as possible in their recruitment processes. This will take place on a rolling basis between October 2017 and January 2018.

Eligible applicants must:

• Have graduated from a first degree (BA or equivalent) in any subject within the past two years (i.e. in 2015, 2016 or 2017) - no minimum grade required AND • Have received a full maintenance grant to attend a UK Higher Education Institution during the full period of their course and be able to verify it with the necessary paperwork